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Anorak News | Brought To Book

Brought To Book

by | 1st, June 2004

‘“I WAS in a pub and I was looking up at their bookshelf, which had the Good Food Guide, the Good Hotel Guide and the Good Pub Guide on it, and suddenly I had a flash, so I got cracking on it.”

And after that, there’s the chimney to sweep

The words of Derek Humphrey, as revealed by the Guardian, who on a visit to Britain from his home in Eugene, Oregon, saw the future through the bottom of a glass while reviewing a bookshelf.

And the product of his cathartic moment is ‘The Good Euthanasia Guide 2004’, or the “good dying” guide, as the paper has it.

And since it pays to be ready for the Grim Reaper’s scythe, the Guardian has had peek at the book’s forward.

“Don’t bother to acquire this book if you are a person who believes that a religious deity is in sole charge of your life and dying,” he writes, so deterring all new Labour voters and George Bush supporters from purchasing his worthy tome.

And it is a worthwhile read, do not doubt that. You see, all books are valid things, even ‘Yes, Please, Thanks’, the latest work from the pen of Penny Palmano, now profiled in the Times.

That the book was first entitled ‘How To Behave In Public’ will give many of you a clue that Ms Palmano’s work is about raising your kiddies the right way. Making them grateful.

“I am not a family therapist, child psychologist, nursery schoolteacher or qualified ‘child’ anything,” says she. But Penny is a mother of three, which is qualification enough, as far as she and her publisher are concerned.

And make that a mother who wants to be proud of her polite children. “Giving up your seat on the bus, helping a mother with a pushchair are small acts of kindness,” says Penny – both gestures that might make her life easier.

We daresay that other small acts of kindness involve Jake and Chloe cooking the dinner, tidying the lounge and servicing mummy’s 4×4 until it runs like baby Armani’s nose.

But even if such books are not for you, Estelle Morris, the Culture Minister, has been spotted by the Independent at the Hay Festival of books looking at some other volumes.

Sorry, make those “ideas”, because reading is no longer about taking time to immerse yourself into another’s world. No, it’s a way of creating “incredibly useful” festivals – “because we all need a place to think and exchange ideas and ideals,” says Morris.

“Politicians in the media can talk to millions,” says Morris in the Indy (a paper read by many less than millions), but they don’t generally get people talking back at them. They’re not used to listening.”

In other words, politicians are not a bit unlike like Penny Palmano’s children, and should be seen and not heard…’



Posted: 1st, June 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink